(2) Trump plans a purge if he wins

Governor Christie, who leads Trump’s transition team, told dozens of donors at the GOP convention that they were drawing up a list of federal government employees appointed by Obama to fire if Trump wins. Christie also said that “One of the things I have suggested to Donald is that we have to immediately ask the Republican Congress to change the civil service laws. Because if they do, it will make it a lot easier to fire those people”. Reuters reported this on the basis of a recording and accounts from two attendees.

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(3) My favorite speech: Chris Christie’s

“Over the convention’s first two nights, a growing number of Republicans called for Hillary Clinton to be imprisoned. …The unprecedented tenor for a national political convention has prompted dismay in some corners of the GOP and even launched a Secret Service investigation into a New Hampshire state representative who said Clinton should be shot by a firing squad.

“At least three speakers called for the presumptive Democratic nominee’s imprisonment. “Lock her up!” the convention crowd shouted repeatedly on both nights, a chant not heard before at nominee Donald Trump’s rallies.

“…the recurring chant has made clear how much Trump has changed his party’s tone and direction. ‘Lock her up!’ Florida Attorney General Pamela Bondi, her state’s top law enforcement official, said. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recited a series of Clinton’s alleged misdeeds and led the crowd in shouts of “Guilty!” after each.

“…She should be “swinging from the rafters” said Susan Reneau, an alternate delegate from Montana, in an interview in Cleveland. Reneau said she blamed Clinton and her handling of government emails for Islamic State attacks in Paris, Belgium and Istanbul.”

“At one point, Christie faulted Clinton’s response to the mass kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria, which happened after she left office. After each accusation, he asked, “Is she guilty or not guilty?” Each time, the crowd roared, ‘Guilty!’

“…American presidential campaigns are not typically built around the dream of jailing the opposing candidate. Prime-time convention speakers usually pay lip service to the cliché of disagreeing without being disagreeable. Convention planners have not, in the past, staged their events like fantasy show trials. They have not sought to work their crowds into ecstasies of hatred.

“…Christie’s speech was logically incoherent. Even if you buy his damning interpretation of Clinton’s foreign policy errors, it doesn’t make sense to discuss them as matters of criminal malfeasance. Emotionally, though, that’s in keeping with how Clinton’s bitterest foes talk about her: as a person of absolute corruption, who, through some sort of occult trick, moves through the world with intolerable impunity. As many people pointed out on Twitter, the way that Christie punctuated his inquisitorial brief with the crowd’s cries of ‘Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!’ made him sound less like a contemporary politician than a magistrate condemning a witch.”

(4) How the GOP got here

Eliot Weinberger reviews the field of oddities that Republican voters had to choose among. The GOP convention was destined to be weird no matter who won. It’s a fun read, if you pretend it is fiction — not the candidates that one of our two major parties put forth to be the next president of the United States. In fact Campaign 2016 provides the clearest possible evidence that the US political system has become dysfunctional.

What matters is what we do about. We should begin preparing in December 2016 to have candidates in 2020 who deserve the office.

(5) Planning for the future

If Trump bombs in November, the Right has already begun planning to complete the GOP’s destruction in 2020: “Cruz in Control” by Brian Goldsmith at The Atlantic — “No potential 2020 candidate has as much going for him as Senator Ted Cruz.”

The likely result: the Democratic Party becomes the overwhelmingly powerful party; it then splits into Left and neoliberal parties.

4 thoughts on “The GOP convention has done its job. Here are some highlights.”

I hope Hillary wins (I’ll take a sleazy bureaucrat over the GOP’s fever dream alternative), but my biggest fear is that the “enthusiasm gap” will propel Trump into the White House. My own prediction is a close race, but Trump wins (by less than 5%, like most recent elections), and we have the lowest voter turnout in a presidential election to date.

Also, if he did win, how do you think the conflict between the GOP’s ever-more-regressive party platform and Trump’s own idiosyncratic, more populist positions would play out?

Many of the headings of the “Shockingly Extreme” list of proposals are distortions of the actual claims being made in the platform. For example:

43. Require bible study in public schools
This is incorrect: the platform encourages state legislatures to offer the Bible in a literature curriculum as an “elective.” This is a far cry from making Bible study a requirement.

12. Make Christianity a national religion
Supporting the public display of the Ten Commandments and supporting voluntary prayer at public school events is not identical to making Christianity a “national religion.”

Overall, the article strikes me as a series of exaggerated claims that are designed to attract attention at the expense of accuracy. On the other hand, some portions of the platform should be cause for alarm. In particular, #50 in the list is worrisome, and I’d like to see both parties take a stand against violence perpetrated by the Israeli military.